Wallington Hall

Wallington Hall in Northumberland was the home of Sir Walter and Lady (Pauline) Trevelyan. Both, but particularly Lady Pauline, were great friends of Ruskin and held gatherings of friends from the arts and sciences to which he was invited. It is now in the ownership of The National Trust.

In a letter from Wallington in 1853 Ruskin writes -

WALLINGTON, 23 June, 1853. ’This is the most beautiful place possible’ a large old seventeenth-century stone house in an old English terraced garden, beautifully kept, all the hawthorns still in full blossom; terrace opening on a sloping, wild park, down to the brook, about the half a mile fair slope; and woods on the other side, and undulating country with a peculiar Northumberlandishness about it’a faraway look which Millais enjoys intensely. We are all very happy, and going this afternoon over the moors to a little tarn where the sea-gulls come to breed.

Wks. 12.xix

However, in a typical Ruskin change of heart, reflecting on a visit in 1857 in his autobiography he writes -

Wallington is in the old Percy country, the broad descent of main valley leading down by Otterburn from the Cheviots. An ugly house enough it was; square set, and somewhat bare walled, looking down a slope of rough wide field to a burn, the Wansbeck, neither bright nor rapid ...

But he partially redeems himself -

But the dearness of Wallington was founded, as years went on, more deeply in its having made known to me the best and truest friend of all my life [...] Dr. John Brown. He was staying at Wallington when I stopped there on my way to give my Edinburgh lectures...

Wks. 35.458